the week's top stories from our team palestine in the international arena becoming a u.n. recognized observer state which could pursue israel over claims of war crimes. egypt's power struggle spirals rebel forces gather strength in a showdown to drop the constitution from the president's self-imposed supreme authority. and watch this space there are more wiki leaks on the way during the song which promises more ground shaking revelations next year so cool to exclusively to our team. this is our tease weekly news review i'm carrie johnston welcome to the

palestinians moved a step closer this week to being fully recognized as independent un voted to upgrade the administration's diplomatic status to non member observer state a middle east correspondent reports now on how the move may signal a change in the way the world sees israeli actions. it might should be no foregone conclusion but that didn't dampen the jubilation on the streets of palestine. overwhelming support for upgraded palestinian state has to a nonmember observer state in the un one hundred thirty eight voting in favor nine against forty one abstentions it's an important political and legal victory to hold israel accountable in a practical way on its violations of the national law and its violations of the rights of the palestinian people especially on the expansion of illegal settlements

palestinians can now apply to join the international criminal court and other global organizations giving them better bargaining chips in dealing with israel but it came at a price within hours tel aviv announced it was building three thousand more homes in the west bank a sure sign that the situation on the ground won't change overnight the buzz does it's not a step forward it's a step aside or even you know a step. back that's really the international community gives hand to this violation the u.s. was also quick to cast a cloud over the palestinian party mood the unfortunate and counterproductive resolution at the united nations general assembly that just passed today's grand pronouncements will soon see. and the palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed but washington's unflinching support

for tel aviv has separated from some of its longtime allies in the un more and more countries are turning their back on decades of negotiations that have led nowhere what has changed has been the continual failure of the us controlled so-called peace process to lead to any kind of an. to occupation and what i think was the catalyst here is that political pressure on other matters in on the palestinian authority from their own population from their own people who were saying you know what we've had twenty one years of failed diplomacy we're not looking for twenty two we want something different and that something means a real shift in policy first and foremost the consensus on the international stage is that israel needs to stop building settlements deemed illegal by the un certainly being around community are you know is a horde. of provocation which heroes are cars. so

god. it was little more than a year ago that palestinian president mahmoud abbas came to the un in a bid for statehood since then tel aviv and washington's approach to the middle east conflict has gained them an ever shrinking minority of supporters the irony is that the bid was passed in the watcher's of israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu and his rightwing foreign minister avigdor lieberman it was last year that lieberman boasted in the united nations that the moral majority of western states was with israel it now turns out he was wrong and whether israel once it or not it's increasingly clear that something needs to give policy r.t. tel aviv egyptians are supposed to decide on their new constitution in two weeks' time but if this week is anything to go by it won't be easy there was widespread anger as the president granted himself sweeping new powers for supreme court judges couldn't rule on the legitimacy of the draft charter of the supporters of mohamed

morsi step stop them even though getting into the chamber itself well the court has now suspended its work indefinitely in protest. unrest returns to the streets after the revolution that toppled hosni mubarak after the election that brought in mohamed morsi egypt is in turmoil once again these round the clock protests have been going on for over a week now it resembles early two thousand and eleven when hosni mubarak was removed from power but that was nearly two years ago shouldn't the revolution have ended by now the mood on top risk where became defiant again after last week's to creba president morsi meaning his decisions would face no legal challenge we had the revolution to get rid of a tyrant the dictator. and we in in order to do that we have made elections and rid of aleutian and their actions to choose someone to the present us

and turned out that this guy is also a tyrant himself however morsi claims his new powers are only temporary you know any of the big hitter in the world. will tell you it is a temporary thing it is full emergency told us the seems the same thing sift usable on the president obama and we stayed under emergency law for seventy years opponents say egypt's new constitution is too islamist and could set the country on the road to religious dictatorship for some sections of society a king to show their support for morsi and their scorn for judges who would block the constitution and i'm here to support the president morsi from so patient might it be for his opposition from the constitutional court. or most of us knows that since it is the morsi is that he got elected by the people when it was at the fight for his failure the rifts in society are undeniable and perhaps more even than or

thora tarion ism is fair is that chaos will tear apart any gains made by the revolution this is something new in egypt that's why it's it's more sitting in a way where you find. people are facing each other in the streets in the ministrations. facing that type of violence from islamic groups egypt's president its government its courts its very constitution are now matters of heated debate one of the few things moved to gyptian do seem to agree on after the long night of mubarak a new day is proving elusive tom bottom party. president morsi claims his almost absolute power is temporary and some observers on warning that egyptians can expect further oppression from the post about regime the fact of the matter is that everything is going in the opposite direction of what the revolution is called for the constituent assembly itself is a reflection of how unwilling to share power the muslim brotherhood are and along

with mohamed morsi. he says that he will give back powers as soon as a parliament is a is elected but he's not allowing you gyptian to share in writing the constitution so this to me seems like a false promise about giving back power because the one thing he can do is allow dipshits to write their own constitution and share power and he's not doing that it's a judicial we have been a tool for the mubarak regime but if we come to think of it when people protested mubarak they were protesting police brutality and we see that morsi is giving promises to the police that they will act with impunity and does not want to bring anyone to justice for the crimes they've done joining us sanjay is promising some new shock revelations to rival the hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables published by wiki leaks two years ago in an interview with r.t. the editor of the whistle blowing web site also claims the us is becoming a totalitarian state with the help of social media. the problem is that all the

time everyone nearly everything they do on the internet is permanently recorded every web search to know what you were thinking one year two days three months ago so you don't know but google knows it remembers the national security agency intercepts the request if it flowed over u.s. border it knows will be. national security agency whistleblower who was the research head of the national security agency's signals intelligence division describes this as turning a key totalitarianism that all the infrastructure has been built for absolute totalitarianism it's just a matter of turning the key and actually the key has already been turned a little bit and it is now affecting people who are targeted for us drone strikes organizations like wiki leaks. national security reporters who are having their sources investigated is already partly turned and you know the question is would we

would go all the way. you can watch the full interview with julian assange john i website r.t. dot com. now u.s. army private bradley manning and manage charged with handing over classified u.s. documents to wiki leaks he spoke out for the first time in over two years saying he considered suicide one detention during his pretrial hearing the twenty four year old said his detention conditions triggered anxiety attacks and if you want to hang himself manning has been locked up for more than one hundred days the longest pretrial detention of a u.s. soldier since the vietnam war but chase another our lawyer and author of a book on manning says even members of the military are supporting the imprisoned private. opinion in the military and intelligence and law enforcement is quite divided about this i am not going to lie most people in the military have

a very strict by the book attitude towards many of the rules not all the rules but many and would like to see that you convicted but i have talked with infantry one of whom who is caught on camera at that infamous collateral murder helicopter video who sees bradley manning is hero who sees the leaks of the iraq war logs including that helicopter video as an unqualified good because now americans can finally see how that war is actually going in ditto for the afghan war logs there are are also people in the f.b.i. who think such a game is week in weeks is very good for national security including the former director of the minneapolis office of the f.b.i. only roundly who is a time magazine's person of the year two thousand and two and i have a long interview in my book with the former top cia analyst ray mcgovern who also sees this all acknowledging this benefit to the public debate about our wars should

be an international good so there is disagreement that the military and intelligence communities about this. coming up the election turnout has tumbled in kuwait seems the opposition boycott has paid off three minutes we'll tell you why changing the rules has a plan to. close the prime minister the press and the public face of what downing ethics inquiry says we can say to media is to be brain dead and listen in towns just ahead. waves of corruption are rocking russia hi. hundreds of millions of dollars vanished for apec building projects and russia's got a nice satellite project a real estate scandal has also led to the defense minister being fired note i said

fired in russia we hear a lot about corruption scandals and the reaction is usually a firing or forced resignation and maybe that would be ok another country but russia has big dreams in a big country that has big corruption spoiling all of those dreams a country can't survive with every infrastructural or scientific project is sucked dry from within whether the government is unwilling or unable to sternly punish these offenders is a huge topic by could tell you that if there's no real fear of punishment this will just keep going on for ever perhaps it's time to put a big asterisk for high level corruption next to the moratorium on the death penalty but that's just my opinion.

you're watching artie's we can use review in kuwait to pro-government candidates

have won the lion's share of seats in parliament after saturday's election but the islamist led opposition which boycotted the vote claiming the turnout was as low as twenty six percent this missing or making body as a legitimate opposition has valid protests until the u.s. backed want to keep his own parliament. reports from kuwait. well voting in kuwait's highly controversial elections may be over but the battle over the country's political future has only just begun lots of new faces in the newly elected parliament which is deemed to be far more government friendly than the previous assembly but that is because the opposition didn't front any candidates in a boycott of the vote that the protest was deemed to be a success with official estimates of placing voter turnout at roughly thirty nine percent in stark contrast to the sixty percent voter turnout that we've seen in the last three elections in this country the opposition claims the turnout was in fact much lower and in its eyes the new body is illegitimate in fact they told the new

assembly on constitutional and according to the popular committee of four boycotting the election votes the new body doesn't represent the majority of the kuwaiti people and has lost popular and political legitimacy the question is of course whether the opposition is now going to take its battle to the streets and whether the monarchy will respond with a heavy hand now what happens here in kuwait has implications far beyond the country's borders as an opec member any sort of on a rest is bound to have an effect on world oil prices the country also serves as a hub for the pentagon's ground forces with thousands of american combat troops stationed here as a military counterweight to iran now the gulf monarchies as a whole have been struggling to stave off the effects of the arab spring with varying degrees of success kuwait has largely seen as the most tolerant of the countries but the worry here is that the trend could be reversed over the past few months the country has seen increasingly violent escalating protests between the opposition and security forces with the latter using tear gas stun grenades and

rubber bullets to disperse crowds political parties are banned as are political gatherings of more than twenty people and activists are claiming of a clamp down against dissent here in this country authorities did allow thousands of opposition demonstrators to gather in a largely peaceful rally on. friday of course the coming weeks are bound to test the limits of the government's tolerance as well as the self control of the opposition what happens here in kuwait could very well write the next chapter of the arab spring you see catherine of r.t. relates. some analysts say curates regime will have staying power as always enjoys the support that comes with being a key u.s. ally the most important element in all of this is whether or not the opposition is able to stand up against this family the ruling class the ruling class in kuwait and most importantly standing against u.s. imperialism kuwait in and of itself is not terribly important but when seen in the

context of the g.c.c. and seen as one of the most reliable u.s. allies particularly juxtaposed against what is happening in bahrain and we understand that the united states and the western powers cannot allow the saw family to fall you have to see that kuwait is a launching point in a possible war against iran so all of these taken together really shows that the united states has both political geo political and then of course social reasons why they want to maintain the status quo. britain's free press learned to face its toughest regulation in three hundred years across the line when court hacking the voice mails of celebrities and the motivic tim a twenty point zero reports now on the inquiry that expose the seedy relationship between the paper's police and politicians. revelations. a wave of public revulsion and one of the big scandals. at the time. not just story. but downing street as

well as the allegations went all the way to the heart the british government to douse the flames number ten ordered the creation of the leveson inquiry in order to investigate the claims and now two years in the making after a chorus line of celebrity witnesses and millions in taxpayers' money the leveson report damning about the press and heavily critical of both the police and the government for what it says was their cozy relationship with the media cameron has been shown with hunt to have been actually batting for the murdoch empire was part of all of this so you know i think that you know there used to be a bit more of a focus on the five years of the police. to do anything about these criminal acts lord leveson his recommendation is for highest standards of self-regulation by the press in forced by legislation and that's what critics fear could stifle the

already declining newspaper industry and deal a huge blow to the freedom of the press in the u.k. is there any way in which you can be a little bit sensitive or a little bit monitored and most people say no with britain now in the midst of a post leveson hangover it's the country's two top politicians who are likely to be the most embarrassed david cameron might be suffering from some uncomfortable flashbacks back in october the prime minister promised to support the leveson recommendations as long as they went bonkers and cut to last week i have some serious concerns and misgivings on this recommendation they break into issues of principle practicality but david cameron's change of heart. guarding the inquiry's findings would be causing him half the headache that nick clegg might be nursing at the moment the liberal democrat deputy prime minister used to talk about liberal democracy a labor predecessors will be remembered as the government who took your freedoms

away we want to be remembered as the ones who gave them back not anymore here he is after leveson published their report i have always said that i would support lord justice leveson reforms providing they are proportionate and workable and i will come on to why i believe that is the case as far as the report's corporate core proposal is concerned namely a tougher system of so for a glacial supported by new independent checks recognised in law recent polls suggest that over two thirds of britons have little or no faith in the newspaper industry anymore and with revelations about the strong links between the police the politicians and the media it's not only trust in fleet street that when dealing i think. obviously we've been very worried about this pressure sometimes i think it's always gone on but we should keep an eye on it and be aware of it. with

opinions raging for and against new legislation it's turning into a no win situation for those in power by questioning the results of the inquiry david cameron looked to his critics like he abandoned the victims of media intrusion for some good press which is what got the government in trouble in the first place. r t london. we're getting reports of explosions in syria's western city of homs with at least seven people killed and more than thirty injured the blast happened near a mosque and a stadium witnesses say there were two separate car bomb attacks it's fear the number of dead could rise with many of the wounded in critical condition syrian. media claims that previously the army killed scores of rebels in an offensive targeting their hideouts on the outskirts of holmes. but it will sweep through some footage of the pakistan senate office can attend business as

a pity for their lives when the gunman is head referencing out tightening and behind some suicide attacks in the country. in time something access across syria was a couple of days while the opposition widely blamed the assad government for the information blockade he's on this patch ensign said penhallow you think it is and backing the rebel militias. we have a massive problem again with syria and we've had this problem from the beginning which is the skewing of information coming out of the country the syrian observatory for human rights was responsible for a lot of. claims or allowed the west to sort of justify the backing of the for you syrian army terrorist group leaders of our western countries particularly nato countries or encouraging the syrian terrorist rebels guerrillas whatever you want to call them to really accelerate a bloodbath in that country because in the eyes of washington and london the bigger

the blood out the quicker they can have reaching just a report just came out this week with a supplying satellite units to rebels rebel groups terrorist groups essentially in syria so they can communicate while the internet is down the country there was a niche initially sold in the media in places like the washington post a move by the assad government possibly to shut down rebel communications but actually upon further investigation it looks like it's possible that actually the combination of the united states operatives and the syrian rebels could actually be behind the bringing down the internet and the reason is is because if the blood escalates from that country the last thing that the west wants is any reports coming out on the internet of actual rebel terrorist atrocities in a country across these that we've seen quite a bit of recently. german lawmakers overwhelmingly back to giving greece its next pay out vital to keeping the country from sliding into bankruptcy means athens can

now pay a way to build this much improved package involves other things slashing interest rates leasing more cash. flows the newness of germans. but insisted the measures helped to bring stability to the. that's what pfizer says the german and words prescriptive of the greek. i think there are a considerable number of people who would like to cut greece loose at this juncture a because it's probably the most unique in thing to do but second of all because ultimately the greek government has simply field to do anything that has really been supposed to do in terms of privatization and so on many times it's enacted legislation but feel to follow through the taxation system in greece is broken all of these sorts of horrible things lead us to the fact that greece is governed in a third world fashion at the moment not in a first world fashion and that ultimately is causing

a huge my diversification with a great many e.u. finance ministers some of them because they've got lots of money such as say germany and poland and so on some of them because they've actually taken their medicine the poor irish twenty five thousand people on the streets of dublin at the weekend complaining about the a sturdy medicine they've had to dig unargued they're hearing that the greeks are going to get all manner of concessions in order to be allowed to get through the next her daughter and get there next be a light that's not fair it's very unreasonable of a lot of people and that's leading a huge number of politicians to be increasingly fed up with the whole situation. some of today's world headlines now taliban suicide bombers have attacked a joint u.s. afghan military base in the city of jalalabad in eastern afghanistan to take part of explosives were detonated the main gate followed by gunfire all nine of the assailants involved were killed when nato also says at least six afghans died and several alliance troops were injured it's the largest such assault in the city

since february when a suicide bomb attack claimed the lives of nine afghans. c.c.t.v. footage shows inside a collapsed tunnel in japan at least five people have been killed authorities say as many as seven people could still be trapped rescue mission has been complicated by thick smoke from a fire inside the tunnel. mains closed while the cause of the collapse is under investigation. russian gas could soon be flying directly to the u.k. energy giants of b.p. and gazprom are talking business as britain seeks to bolster its energy security the north stream pipeline could be extended to the u.k. by the sixty deal said the size of next year right now the pipeline runs from russia to germany on the baltic sea and would need to be extended six hundred miles to reach the project appeals to the u.k. government to office diversifying gas supplies currently mostly coming from the

middle east. now next the second part of our feature on the anti corporate movement occupy wall street which marriage us every year before sweeping across the country watching here on r.t. in just a couple minutes. you can tell an ordinary russian siberian in the blink of an eye one i didn't century anthropologists. those days siberians were different clothes different food. different animals. but what about. my journey began in two men but the big city was all shiny. scrapers and shopping malls much like any other prosperous russian. so. a small town just outside.

dumplings came from here to dominate the russian cuisine but only in siberia. with cabbage and jam making sure you can have as a starter main dish. although it may draw. most people in siberia see nothing wrong with hunting only if you decide to participate. when you look upon martin. as in the middle of a swamp only accessible by.